The Cyberspace defence Army received the peculiar Minister of Digitization award in the IT Wings in Administration competition for Mercury 2.0. The application developed by experts from the office of the Cyberspace defence Army is utilized for the safe transmission of information by soldiers and staff of the National Defence Ministry.
Mercury 2.0. allows telephone calls, text and voice messages and short films, as well as organizing group chats and videoconferencing. The communicator is no different from another popular applications. Importantly, Mercury 2.0. ensures advanced connection confidentiality, and the full strategy server infrastructure is owned by the Ministry of National Defence. – All processed data is on military servers, so no 1 is able to gain unauthorized access to them. Mercury 2.0 was based on the Matrix protocol, which allows encryption “end to end”. This means that the message is encrypted straight at the sender and decrypted only at the recipient – explains Colonel Przemysław Lipczyński, a press spokesperson for cyberspace defence troops.
The communicator was created by a squad of experts at the Cyberspace defence Army Headquarters. The task has been under way since 2021. The biggest challenge was to guarantee maximum safety of the information transmitted while maintaining the communicator functionality. – These are 2 parameters that are hard to reconcile in the process of designing applications. expanding the safety of applications frequently reduces its functionality and vice versa. In the case of a military communicator, the apparent precedence was to guarantee the security, i.e. the confidentiality of the data transmitted – said Colonel Lipczyński. – Therefore, the application had to be designed in specified a way that despite the introduced safety features it was intuitive and easy to use. And it worked – he adds.
"IT Wings in Administration" is awarded the best IT projects created by public institutions all year. The award chapter – awarded by the monthly “IT in Administration” – takes into account the innovation of projects which must besides be of advanced quality and facilitate access to public services.
This year, the jury awarded a peculiar award to a task that not only allows for the exchange of information, but besides ensures a very advanced level of safety and confidentiality of correspondence. The military emphasizes that Mercury 2.0 is simply a safe alternate to commercially available communicators specified as Signal, WhatsApp, Messenger or Viber. – peculiar prize of the Minister of Digitization is simply a large discrimination for cyberspace defence troops. This besides confirms that our passion and commitment are noticed and appreciated. – emphasizes Colonel Lipczyński. The WOC spokesperson stresses that peculiar congratulations are due to the full task team, which is liable for the full cycle of application work, from writing to investigating to user support.
You can usage Mercury 2.0. on Android and IOS devices, or run the app in your web browser. The communicator allows you to make a closed contact database. In the future, the app is intended to service all users utilizing business phones in the defence department.
The main prize “IT Wings in Administration” this year was awarded to the University of Lodz for the task “MyUniLodz – a mobile student application”. It concentrates in 1 place the most crucial information for students on, among others, science, wellness care or cultural events.
